UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

why lp -o <option> doesn't work on my SCO Unix.

Is it giving a syntax error on the command, or is the command not changing (altering) the print option?

Wendyz -
From your other thread - your Fujitsu printer responds to EPSON printer commands:
SI is ascii 15 - DC2 is ascii 18

SI turns on condensed mode printing.
DC2 turns off consdensed mode printing.

You will have to embed an SI character - not a literal "SI" but as an unreadable character as the first character in your document. The last character will have to be a DC2. Also unreadable.

Assuming you are not in some bizarre shell and you have a document to print.
Let's assume the document is in a file named docfile. And that you want to keep docfile on disk without weird characters in it.

Code:

echo "\017" > tmp
cat docfile >> tmp
echo "\022" >> tmp
lp -d myprinter tmp

You do not need a -o <option> You are forcing the options yourself.

\017 is the SI character, \022 is the DC2 character. You need quotes around them like this: "\017" The "name value" of the character is 017, but you need a backslash in front of it so unix sees it as an octal value, not a literal character.

I'm surprised your syadmin can't setup cups to drive the printer for you.

Finally - suppose you don't like compressed mode, you want a different font setting.
Then you get to go to websites:
one with octal (the \017 thing) values for characters:
Ascii Table - ASCII character codes and html, octal, hex and decimal chart conversion

one with the epson manual for printer control codes:
http://support.epson.ru/products/man...0350/part1.pdf

You then need to read the manual, get the control code sequences you want - finally embed them in your document. Many of the sequences are several weird characters all together, and many of them start with the escape character - so we call them "escape codes" or "escape sequences"

some give error message, like when I use lp -o cpi=12, it will show error message said that can't handle cpi=. And some options I use, the output didn't change anything but still can print out.

Thanks very much! Now it works. Any one question: how can I select pages which I want to print out. Like I have 10 pages and I just want to print 1st, 3rd page, how can I do. By the way, -o<option> doesn't work.